Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to new
President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday expressing hopes to deepen ties and
resolve differences amid diplomatic rifts over a US missile defense
system deployed in South Korea.

China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying that he has always valued the relations between China and South Korea.

British
Columbia has its first minority government in 65 years as the Liberals
squeaked out a razor-thin victory over the NDP on Tuesday, with the
Green party holding the balance of power for the first time in Canadian
history.

Christy
Clark's Liberals won 43 seats, the NDP under John Horgan got 41 and the
Greens led by Andrew Weaver achieved a major breakthrough by picking up
three seats.

The
NDP won one riding by only nine votes, making a recount a certainty
that will determine the difference between a minority and an ultra-thin
majority if it were to flip to the Liberals.

About 95 soldiers are stationed in neighbouring Oka. They are working
to keep the region’s water filtration plants running as the area
grapples with historic flood levels from the Lake of Two Mountains. The
federal government offered to assist Kanesatake last weekend, but Simon
refused.

Instead, the chief turned to his own community and a sister Mohawk
reserve for emergency relief. As waves battered the dikes on the south
side of town, Simon says about 100 local volunteers worked in shifts to
hold the line and save as many homes as possible.

“When Mohawks mobilize, you can’t stop us,” he said. “You’d have one
person bagging two, three pallets of sand by themselves. Elders, women
and children they were here, helping wrap the bags. It was amazing.”

(Sidebar: the following segment will be so Islamophobic that it will register on the Richter scale and cause Iqra Khalid to soil her shorts.)

A closer look at Motion 103's initiator, supporters and other
respected Muslim figures in Canada, however, indicates that there is
cause for worry.

"Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but
rather the beginning... All of us must work hard to maintain our
peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is
followed by comprehensive policies," wrote Samer Majzoub, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate of the Canadian Muslim Forum -- presumably meaning that the next steps are to make it binding.

"M103's supporters in the Muslim community have questionable ties of their own. It has been reported
that Samer Majzoub was the manager of a Montreal private school that
received a $70,761 donation from the Kuwait embassy, while the National
Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) – formerly the Canadian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations – published an open letter linking M103 to a wide-ranging campaign aimed at reducing systemic racism and Islamophobia in Canada...."While the NCCM's open letter does not directly call for Sharia law
or the criminalization of criticism of Islam, it does advance the notion
that the famously tolerant nation of Canada must set up anti-racism directorates in each province to track instances of Islamophobia, institute a mandatory course on systemic racism for Canadian high school students, and train its police officers to use bias-neutral policing."

This attempt to turn free speech on its head in Canada is in keeping with the teachings of the country's top Muslim cleric, Iqbal Al-Nadvi,
chairman of the Canadian Council of Imams, president of the Canadian
branch of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim
chaplain of the Canadian army.

ICNA is an organization that strives "to build an Exemplary Canadian
Muslim Community" by "total submission to Him [Allah] and through the
propagation of true and universal message of Islam," according to Jonathan D. Halevi.

They made the captive children, malnourished and weak from hunger,
fight over a single tomato. Then the Islamic State group militants told
them, “In paradise, you’ll be able to eat whatever you want. But first
you have to get to paradise, and you do that by blowing yourself up.”

The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants
on boys from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group
overran the community’s towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group
forced hundreds of boys, some as young as 7 or 8, into training to
become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous
ideology.

Now boys who escaped captivity are struggling to regain some
normalcy, living in camps for the displaced along with what is left of
their families. After surviving beatings, watching horrific atrocities,
being held for months or years apart from their parents, losing loved
ones and narrowly escaping death themselves, they are plagued by
nightmares, anxiety and outbursts of violence.

“Even here I’m still very afraid,” said 17-year-old Ahmed Ameen Koro,
who spoke to The Associated Press in the sprawling Esyan Camp in
northern Iraq, where he now lives with his mother, sister and a brother,
the only surviving members of his family. “I can’t sleep properly
because I see them in my dreams.”

Just a few hours after the commemoration of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2017, Turkish warplanes dropped bombs on the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar (Shingal) on April 25, at around 2 AM local time, according to reports from the region.

The strikes reportedly killed at least 70 people in the area, with one bomb hitting a Kurdish peshmerga post in Sinjar, killing at least five and severely wounding several more.

Yazidis say they have been subjected to 72 genocidal massacres. The latest genocide, committed by ISIS, is the 73rd
and is still going on. Tens of thousands of Yazidis have been displaced
and are refugees in several countries. Hundreds of Yazidi girls and
women are still bought, sold and raped by ISIS terrorists -- the same
men who murdered their husbands and fathers.

While Yazidis are still suffering from these atrocities, Turkey,
evidently still no friend of non-Muslims, has attacked them yet again.

Just to remind everyone, Trudeau - among many other things - refused to let Yazidis into the country as refugees (the term he used was "disgusting").

The
federal government's plan to impose a carbon tax on provinces that
don't do it themselves is expected to mimic the Alberta carbon
program, including rebate payments sent directly to low- and
middle-income individuals.

A
source who has seen the plan tells The Canadian Press that the
technical paper outlining Ottawa's proposal will be released next week,
seven months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told provinces they'd
have until 2018 to implement a price on carbon or have Ottawa do it for
them.

The
Alberta model applies a tax on carbon generated by burning most
transportation and heating fuels, except for those used on farms. It
divides the tax revenue among income-based rebates to Albertans, a cut
to the small business tax and investments in green infrastructure and
renewable energy.

Trudeau
and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna have always said any revenue
from a carbon tax would remain in the province where it is raised,
but they have been careful not to say it would go to the provincial
government. By following the Alberta model, the federal government can
send some of the money raised by the tax to individuals,
bypassing provincial governments which refuse to impose their own carbon
price.

(Sidebar: this is the same environment minister who has trouble distinguishing puffins from penguins.)

Americans are less interested in travel to Cuba this year than they
were in 2016, a survey from insurance provider Allianz Global Assistance
found. Some 76% of the 1,514 respondents said they were not likely to
plan a trip to Cuba in 2017 compared to 70% in 2016. Only 2% of those
surveyed planned to visit Cuba in the next six months or by the end of
2017, the same as 2016 despite a projected increase in travelers from
the country’s ministry of tourism. It also found that 60% of Americans
said “would not like to travel to Cuba” compared to just 58% in 2016.

Although
some of these shifts may be expected after the initial flurry of
interest, flight trends also suggest demand is lower than initially
expected, said Brian Sumers, an airline analyst at travel site Skift.
“When the country opened up, just about every U.S. airline was obsessed
with getting as many routes into Havana as it possibly could — they
thought it was going to be a gravy train,” he said. “Now, as I
understand it, a lot of the flights are empty.”

Indeed, the initial excitement about the formerly closed off country gave way to moral dilemmas over food shortages and other problems caused by tourism, as well as disappointment over limited working internet,
lower hotel standards, and lack of running water there. The Allianz
study found lack of travel infrastructure was a major cause of anxiety
about traveling to Cuba for 13% of Americans.